1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to communication apparatus including radio frequency (RF) circuits and signal processing circuits and, more particularly, to buffering data associated with signal processing tasks.
2. Description of the Related Art
High performance wireless communication apparatus such as RF receivers, transmitters, and transceivers typically include RF front-end circuitry that operates on an RF signal being received or transmitted. For example, the front-end circuitry may down-convert a received RF signal to baseband and/or up-convert a baseband signal for RF transmission.
In addition to the RF front-end circuitry, which may include sensitive analog circuits, typical wireless communication apparatus may also include digital processing circuitry that performs various digital functions including, for example, low level baseband signal processing, implementation of the communication protocol stack, and various user interface functionality. The digital processing circuitry may include a variety of specific hardware such as a digital signal processor (DSP), an microcontroller unit (MCU), hardware accelerators, memory, and/or I/O interfaces, among numerous other specific hardware devices.
In a conventional communication apparatus, certain signal processing tasks may be scheduled to complete immediately following or during the reception of an RF signal. As such, in a conventional communication apparatus, buffer space for temporarily storing data associated with the signal processing tasks may be minimal.